Dana Loesch Can’t Believe People Are So Angry About Her NRA Ad That All But Calls for Civil War

The NRA is getting a little of the sweet, white-hot outrage
they so crave with a new and deranged ad featuring their
spokesperson, pundit Dana Loesch. The ad explicitly positions
Real Americans against the violent, lying left, and—given that
it’s an ad for a gun lobbying organization—it reads a lot like
a call to take up arms against those menacing liberals. But who
is Dana Loesch, why is she in my face, and where does this fit
in with the proud tradition of batshit NRA ads?

Loesch is a conservative talk radio host usually found on The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s
chalkboard-lined panic room. She has a show calledDana, and you will be forgiven for having never heard
of it before, and never thinking of it again. Back in February,
the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre named Loesch a national
spokesperson for the NRA, and this week, the internet is
captivated by this ad featuring her and a bunch of rhetoric
that is profoundly inflammatory even by the standards of the
NRA.

The ad isn’t brand-new, but the NRA recently put it on
Facebook, which is why you’re suddenly seeing discussion of it.
Here’s a full transcript:

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use
their schools to teach children that their president is
another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and
award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again.
And then they use their ex-president to endorse the
resistance. All to make them march, make them protest, make
them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia
and smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and
airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding — until the
only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop
the madness. And when that happens, they’ll use it as an
excuse for their outrage.

The only way we stop this, the only way we save our
country and our freedom is to fight this violence of lies
with the clenched fist of truth. I’m the National Rifle
Association of America and I’m freedom’s safest place.

This language, combined with Loesch’s clench-jawed, unblinking,
infuriated delivery and the menacing string section underneath,
struck many folks as a justification for using violence. It’s
incredibly, almost comically divisive (“their awards
shows,” “their ex-president”). It certainly appears to
endorse police violence to “stop the madness,” as Loesch puts
it. It positions public protest—an American right and one of
our proudest traditions—as something menacing and treasonous.
It also indicates that the “law abiding” citizenry won’t be
safe from liberals unless they do …. something. Hmm.
What could it be? What could the nation’s largest gun-lobbying
organization possibly be advocating?

Loesch is one of the raft of conservative pundits who washed
ashore on the frothy tides of the Tea Party back in 2010, when she
started filling in for right-wing radio host Michael Savage.
(Loesch has linked her political awakening to 1. Marrying a
Republican, her husband/manager Chris Loesch, and 2. The
attacks on September 11, 2001.) By 2011, she had showily left the St. Louis Tea
Party to devote her time to appearing on your television,
and now she appears bound for a promising new super-career as
the rage-filled face of terrified white conservative womanhood.

The NRA already featured Loesch in an ad last summer about how
women are only safe from rapists and “violent thugs” with guns.
She warns them, “Your life expectancy just got shorter,” and
adds, “This is what real empowerment looks like:
millions of American moms, grandmothers and professional women
taking our lives and our family’s lives into our own, capable
hands.”

That’s completely in line with the NRA’s rhetoric—shoot every
personal and societal problem to death—and it’s worth noting
that the NRA’s ads are predictably deranged even when they
don’t read like calls for armed violence. Recall, if you will,
our favorite one, featuring Charlie Daniels doing a surreal monologue on
“flower child” Barack Obama and how he is not a real American
like all the people who make a living wrestling alligators.

The newest Loesch ad, though, comes at a time when we’re about
a whisper away from full-scale internecine conflict in this
country. It’s not surprising that it’s attracting this level of
attention, dissent, and disgust. But Loesch herself is furious
that anyone would make the subtext of this thing text. She even
ludicrously claimed that it doesn’t have anything to do with
firearms:

Dana. Girl. Did no one tell you? You were in an ad for the
NRA.

Loesch is also busy pointing out on Twitter that her line “the
clenched fist of truth” comes from imagery that’s traditionally
associated with the left, the raised, clenched fist. That’s
true!

But it’s a little confusing what point Loesch is trying to make
there.

“That’s not the right’s imagery…. that’s progressive leftist
imagery,” she tells her leftist critics in a very long,
grammatically adventurous video that’s currently her pinned
tweet. “It’s the imagery of the Bernie brothers and the pajama
boys and the Hillary Clintonistas.”

In other words, Loesch is telling us that she and the NRA
appropriated the imagery of a clenched first, even though when
it’s associated with the left, it stands, in her mind, for
violent protest or being a whiny loser. She also urges her
critics to “take a Midol” and “get a grip,” which is wild
advice coming from a woman who made an eight-minute video
sitting three inches from a camera yelling about leftists
lighting garbage can fires.

This is all indicative of a few key points:

The NRA makes inflammatory ads for attention, and they
succeed, even as their real power lies in the millions of
dollars they give to your lawmakers each and every year.

Right-wing women who want to succeed as pundits have to
work very hard and be twice as batshit as their male
counterparts to succeed, particularly when they are not
blonde.

Loesch is using the backlash to the ad for attention, for
increased fame, and to claim she’s being specially targeted by
the left. But she’s also taking a page from our extremely
touchy president and a wave of particularly litigious
right-wing personalities, by claiming that anyone calling the
ad sexist or racist deserves to be sued.

This is the new face of right-wing media: managing to imply, in
the same confused breath, that leftists are violent, menacing,
and over-sensitive. Meanwhile, brave right-wing pundits are
patriotic, strong, and unbothered by PC rhetoric—but they’re
also totally about to sue your ass off for calling them names.
Congratulations to Dana Loesch for so perfectly embodying our
times, and making a quick buck doing it.